The 'hard problem of consciousness' formulated by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers has heated the minds of philosophers, neuroscientists and cognitive researchers alike in recent decades. Chalmers argues that the real challenge is to explain why and how we have subjective, qualitative experiences (also known as qualia). The central question of the hard problem is: Why and how do subjective, conscious experiences arise from physical processes in the brain?

This question may seem simple at first glance, but it has far-reaching implications for our understanding of consciousness, reality, and the human experience. It goes beyond simply explaining how the brain works and targets the heart of what it means to be a conscious being.

A concrete example of this problem is the question: "Why do we experience the color red as red?" This is not just about how our visual system works, but why we have a subjective experience of red in the first place, rather than simply processing that information without consciously experiencing it.

In the following, I will explain that both the question of the hard problem and the answers often given to it are based on two, if not three, decisive errors in reasoning. These errors of thought are so fundamental that they not only challenge the hard problem itself, but also have far-reaching implications for other areas of philosophy and science.

The first error in thinking: The confusion of levels of description

Let's start with a highly simplified example to illustrate the first error in thinking: Imagine a photon beam hits your eye. This light stimulus is transmitted to the brain via the optic nerve, where it excites a specific group of neurons.

Up to this point, nothing immaterial has happened. We operate exclusively in the field of physics and physiology. This process, which describes the physical and biological foundations of vision, can be precisely grasped and analyzed with the tools of the natural sciences.

Interestingly, the same process can also be described from a completely different perspective, namely that of psychology. There the description would be: "I see something red and experience this perception consciously." This psychological description sounds completely different from the physiological one, but it refers to the same process.

The decisive error in thinking now occurs when we swap or mix the levels of description. So if we suddenly switch from the physiological to the psychological level and construct a causal relationship between the two that cannot exist in reality. So if we claim that physiology is the basis of psychology, or that the excited group of neurons causes the conscious experience of red.

In truth, it is not a causal relationship, but a correlation between two different levels of description of the same phenomenon. By falsely establishing a causal relationship, we artificially create the seemingly insoluble question of how neuronal activity can give rise to conscious experience.

This mistake is comparable to suddenly changing lanes on the motorway and becoming a wrong-way driver. You leave the safe area of a consistent level of description and enter a range where the rules and assumptions of the previous level no longer apply.

The Second Error in Thinking: The Confusion of Perspectives

The second fundamental error in thinking is based on the confusion of the perspectives from which we look at a phenomenon. Typically, we start with a description of the visual process from a third-person perspective - in other words, we describe what is objectively observable. Then, suddenly, and often unconsciously, we switch to first-person perspective by asking why we experience the process of seeing in a certain way.

By making this change of perspective, we once again establish a supposed causal relationship, this time between two fundamentally different 'observational perspectives'. We try to deduce the subjective experience of seeing from the objective description of the visual process, which leads to further seemingly insoluble problems.

This change of perspective is particularly treacherous because it often happens unnoticed. It leads to questions such as "Why does consciousness feel the way it feels?", which already contain in their formulation the assumption that there must be an objective explanation for subjective experiences.

The Third Error in Thinking: The Tautological Question

A third error in thinking, which is more subtle but no less problematic, is that we ask questions that are tautological in themselves and therefore fundamentally unanswerable. A classic example of this is the question: "Why do I see the color red as red?"

This question is similar to asking why H2O is wet. We first define water as wet and then claim that this definition must be explained physically. Similarly, we define our subjective experience of the color red, and then demand an explanation of why that experience is exactly as we have defined it.

Such tautological questions mislead us because they give the impression that there is a deep mystery to be solved, when in reality there is only a circular definition.

The consequences of these errors in thinking

The effects of these errors in thinking go far beyond the 'hard problem of consciousness'. They form the basis for a multitude of misunderstandings and pseudo-problems in philosophy and science.

On the one hand, they form the basis for large parts of esotericism, which speaks of a 'spirit' that only arises through a language shift and is then constantly expanded. The same applies to explanatory approaches that want to ascribe additional, mysterious substances to matter, such as 'information' in the sense of an 'it from bit'.

The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein already held the view that the majority of philosophical problems are based on linguistic confusion. I would like to add that they are also based on unnoticed shifts in perspective and the mixing of levels of description.

Evolutionary Biology Explanation

With the evolutionary biological emergence of sensors and nerves, the orientation of organisms took on a multimodal quality compared to the purely chemotactic one. Centralization in the brain brought with it the need for a feedback mechanism that made it possible to consciously perceive incoming stimuli – consciousness, understood as the ability to sense stimuli. This development represents a decisive step forward, as it allowed organisms to exhibit more complex and flexible behaviours.

With the differentiation of the brain, the sensations experienced became more and more abstract, which allowed the organisms to orient themselves at a higher level. This form of abstraction is what we call "thoughts" – internal models of the world that make it possible to understand complex relationships and react flexibly to the environment.

This evolutionary perspective shows that consciousness is essentially an adaptive function for optimizing survivability. Consciousness allowed organisms not only to react, but to act proactively, which was an evolutionary advantage in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment. The hard problem of consciousness can therefore be seen as a misunderstanding of the evolutionary function and development of consciousness. What we perceive as a subjective experience is essentially the evolution of a mechanism that ensures that relevant stimuli are registered and processed in an adaptive way.
Because without consciousness, i.e. thinking and feeling, sensors and nerves would have no meaning.